We’re Just Getting Started…

What a week! E3 is always an exciting time of year when we can roll up our sleeves and finally show you what we have planned for the year and beyond. As I’m sure you saw, on Monday we announced we are expanding the purchase options for PS3 by adding a new PS3 model to the market in August with an 80GB HDD. We also were able to engineer some cost savings into hardware production of PS3 and lowered the purchase price of our 60GB model by $100, effective immediately. We feel that is a substantial price reduction and hope if you haven’t purchased a PS3 yet, it will encourage you to do so. You probably also heard that we introduced a new, sleeker PSP; new features for our PlayStation Home service; and, as promised: games, games and more games.

In addition, the PSP will score more than 140 games and PS2 over 160 this year. And, if you didn’t get a chance to see the new Star Wars Battlefront PSP Entertainment Pack, be sure to check out the pictures I’ve included here with this post. The Darth Vader image on the back of the new white PSP is pretty cool, in my opinion.

Our goal right now is simple: to provide you with the most compelling gaming experience possible, and as we are showing here this week, we are well on the way to achieving that goal.

Right now is a good time to reflect and say thank you. Thank you for being passionate members of the video game community and part of the PlayStation family. The best is yet to come.

379 Comments

I wasn’t to impressed with what was shown. Killzone looks good, but still needs some work. i remember one editor saying Gears of War top it by a bit and Gears is on 360. Where are these “completely impossible to do on 360 titles”, and not because there Sony first-party titles. Microsoft had a good showing and had genuine exclusives none of this “exclusive ‘this year'”. Microsoft is snipping once key PS exclusives and getting some of it own. Wii watching from the Top Dog seat as Microsoft stomps mud holes in you. You dropped the ball with PS2. Yes Wii is outselling your PS2, maybe not overall, but on a monthly basis with its popularity it could do it with time. And you didn’t announce a rumble-Sixaxis and you haven’t fixed PSN User-Interface [It is slow both to load and to navigate through]. So drop the mouse idea and redesign the entire store [It would also help to intergate PSN/store into the PS3 UI]. So here are somethings to do:

-More third-party exclusives, the support you have shown today looked pitiful at best. [MGS 4 seems to already be being prepped for 360 as soon as you year exclusivity deal runs out.]
-Fix/redsign PSN/Store
-Make a Waggle controller for PS2 and bundle it with the PS2 and set the price at $99 or less. Also, when you do that make sure you make lots of Wii-ish titles for it and market like hell to the casual market.
-As soon as you can drop PSP and make a new one that is like the DS or add three screens, hell I’ll even make a design for you if you want. Move to Flash Memory instead of using UMDs. You might want to have UMD support in the PSP2 purely for the reason of backwards-compatibility. And do a trade-in deal for PSP2 [ex. Trade-in PSP for PSP2 and get a 100-150 dollars off.].
– Unify buddy list, basically do what you doing with Home but in the 2-d space because not everyone want Home. But, they also don’t want to be short changed for not using it.
– I already said this before, but please increase third-party support for everything from multi-platform to exclusives. The PlayStation brand was built buy third-parties not first [first-party is doing pretty good work though].
-EXCLUSIVES, EXCLUSIVES, EXCLUSIVES… [Yes, I’m yelling and clapping my hands each time I say it.] And no, I don’t mean exclusives as it on PS3 exclusively for two days, a week, or even a years. If you got to drown third-party devs/publishers in money, hookers, or booze then do it. Because at the end of the day all consumers see is the products and not all the behind the scenes stuff. So, they don’t care MS is buying out third-party stuff from under you. All the care about is that game ‘X’ looks better or is exclusive to ‘Y’ console.

P.S. Love the previous versions of PlayStation, but PS3 doesn’t seem to be living up to the hype. You can say consumer expectations are to high, but you dug that hole not us. So jump the bar or get clothes-lined by it. Sorry, about telling you how to do your job, but it looks to use like your not doing it and I’m not you so all I can do is complain.

Mr. Tretton,
That was a very good confrence and thats good you made it through because you looked nervous as hell, lol. I, am confindent that you guys are showing that Sony isn’t doing bad and we have the content to prove it. If by any chance you read this congradulations on winning people back because from how that confrence went I guarentee you did. By the way is there any chance of you doing another amazing confrence at TGS? If you pull off the suprises and the atmosphere you did here in North America the Playstation Brand will put alot of smiles on many faces.

MR JACK, i oficially love you… that conference was just awesome, i watched it live… and i was astonished by how gt5 is looking… now give me rumble and ill marry you or phil… i dont care! love you both! OOOOOO KZ2 WAS AWESOME!!!

The PSP is still using 802.11B?
Why not 802.11G, by now? That bandwidth will eventually be needed. Are we waiting for N to be finalized?

Where’s the Movie Download Service announcements featuring subscription and purchase options? The movie service is about a year and a half late, from when it was originally promised, especially with Starz VONGO @ CES 06.

Where were the announcements stating Sony CONNECT was going to be merged or re-launched into the PlayStation Network/Store?

I have a 160+ purchase investment in CONNECT and I intend to see it through to the PS3/PSP if I am going to continue my invesment in Sony, along with the 4 Net-Walkmans, I own.

Where’s Skype? It’s on the Sony Mylo and references have already been found in the PSP firmware.

You could not only allow music to be played, but allow use to record what were doing a take high-quality screen shots/caps of what is on the screen. That would be a good way to one up MS’s in-game media ‘thing’ access.

Noname, I think you’re being a little *too* critical here. I’m sure Sony hasn’t given away all their cards just yet. Personally, I thought their conference was amazing and lived up to my expectations… and I’ve been a long time PlayStation supporter. I think this holiday will be interesting for sure.

I noticed the 2 holes near the bottom of the PSP have been moved to the top. In the original manual it was said they were speakers, but the speakers were actually at the bottom of the system. Does this mean you have moved the speakers so they project outward towards the person playing it more?

Also I like the new PSP colors and the feature to output to a TV, will be very useful. Is the black one going to stay at the $169 price?

You could not only allow music to be played, but allow us to record what we’re doing on screen and take high-quality screen shots/caps of what is on the screen. That would be a good way to one up MS’s in-game media ‘thing’ access.

I hope you guys drop a new firmware update on us, or at least make mention of one :). A lot of us PS3 owners are looking forward to the day we can finally play Ridge Racer with our own funky Eurobeat music, or online Resistance with some catchy rock, etc.

i loved the Sony Press Conference. nintendo and microsoft conferences were very cheesy showing known products, annoying talking from executives, and stats stats stats. Sony’s conference was very appealing with comedy and a crapload of new products. “that’s hair from chewy” “no that’s from me” hahahaha jack tretton is hilarious. i liked how Kaz was the professional guy, Phil, straight facts, Jack, comedian, awesome guy.

one quick questions, Is HAZE a PS3 exclusive or timed exclusive? i heard itll be exclusive for the holiday season, but dunno what that exactly means.

Press Conference was good but its all trailers not much game play and most of the games shown are future titles the future looks good but i live in the present and the present sux rite now for ps3 there all show and no go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m even thinking of getting a PSP if they come to europe too, I think the new Star wars pack is really great value.
And great to see some exclusives back to playstation, I think everyone can see that the other consoles are current gen and will fade away at some point (especially the wii).

One question though about F1 games.
Every year during E3, sony announced a new F1 game but this time they didn’t.
Are we still getting F1 titles on our PS3’s? our is this a franchise lost?

in the words of LLCoolJ: “don’t call it a comeback”!
holy crap, that was awesome.
so glad to hear about all the exclusives – first AND third party.
ignore the people complaining about what they didn’t get; they’re just missing out on all the cool stuff that’s coming up and out this year.
oh, and awesome job about getting videos up on the playstation store – we’d love a demo or two too, but it’s nice to see you on top of keeping us updated so quickly!

“Too critical…” “He’s a fanboy…”
Yay a PS fan with half-a-brain. Come on guy/gals we need to be very critical of Sony. If we don’t make demands they’re never going to do anything to push themselves. They will just say “we are dominant”, “all nay sayer are a vocal minority”, ” PS2 proves we can deliver”… Yes you can deliver …when you are on top. Now there sitting around with little in the way of exclusives, they seem to be turtling along in fixing things, and when we complain they generally turn the other cheek or spin thing like a master DJ. The reason they got to get big exclusives and make awesome first-party games is because their console is the most expensive, has sub-par UI, and their third-party game support is lacking/way behind. The don’t seem to get that they have strong competition this time around. It seems like they suffer from a really bad case of “Victor” syndrome. I don’t buy a console out of pity. I guess I’ll play the bad guy pushing the demands to the extreme because these are the goals they have to meet to succeed.

If they weren’t so damn naggy and sounded like you just wouldn’t be satisfied even IF they did give you said things. It seems like no matter what Sony does for their peeps, no one is happy. Some of the things you are asking for are just stupid and redundant, like a waggle ps2 controller? Why? What the hell would be the point? There wouldn’t be any games to support it! A multi screen PSP2? Ok, go work for Sony and stop yelling at them about stuff that isn’t even being discussed yet. They will never respond to this kind of hanus ridiculous wishbabble. And then when they don’t, you’ll come posting more negative crap on here, when in reality, the things you were talking about make you look worse than what they are going to do.

Some of the things you are suggesting that Sony do are reactive moves that require too much money & effort. Waggle for the PS2? Why? It’s selling like crazy. What they need to do is focus their attention on the PS3 and PSP.

As for unified friends list…we already have it….check out Home and the revealation of the fact that you can already just hop into a game.

All the stuff that is being done in Home will be done thru XMB which is due in some unannounced firmware update.

There are still alot of stuff coming up and a number of events till holidays, LGC, TGS & E4A.

@ noname.
wow – talk about a whiner…
“little in the way of exclusives”
– MGS4, UT3, Ratchet, Uncharted, Infamous, Warhawk, LittleBigPlanet…want me to go on?
“they seem to be turtling along in fixing things”
– because quarterly updates like another company is so much better? pfft!
“when we complain they generally turn the other cheek or spin thing like a master DJ”
– maybe if people like you weren’t making outrageous complaints (like “waggle PS2”? are you on crack?), it’d be easier for them to pay attention to us

Great conference at E3, it was nice to see you there Jack Tretton, you actually did pretty well without a podium to cling on to.

As for the new PSP, I mean being able to hook it up to a TV, that’s cool and all, but what else has it got? It remind me of the new PS2, it’s lighter and slimmer…but why would I spend money on it, unless I’m just now buying a PSP? All well, who am I to criticize Sony judgments?

As for the rest of the conference, loved it, good game line up, plenty of new announcements, it almost makes me want to buy a PS3. If I had the money, I probably would, but personally I don’t need the extra cost of things like Home and the Playstation Network, that’s why I’ll stick with my OG gaming machine the Playstation 2. Which is why I am so looking forward to Guitar Hero 3 and Mercenaries 2.

Maybe games are just becoming out of my time and interest, but I think companies should put less attention on crazy online features like downloading games and movies and more and the console hardware and buy able software. It’s all a little much for me, but there are others who are loving it, I’m only one opinion.